Imagine walking through a crowded marketplace, shouting your credit card number to a friend on the other side. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Yet, without encryption technology, this is essentially what we’d be doing every time we use our digital devices online.
Every time you check your bank balance, message your doctor about test results, or share family photos with loved ones, an invisible digital guardian stands watch. Without encryption, our most private digital moments would be exposed and vulnerable to prying eyes, criminal exploitation, or unauthorized government surveillance. Encryption serves as this digital shield—a sophisticated mathematical lockbox that ensures our private information remains private.
Encryption is the process of scrambling your data and information into an unreadable format using algorithms and keys, ensuring that only the intended recipients can access the information. This process safeguards our privacy by preventing unauthorized access to personal data, ensuring that sensitive information remains confidential. Even if your message is intercepted by a third party, they would not be able to understand it. Widespread adoption of encryption fosters trust in digital systems, allowing users to be confident that their information and activities online are secure.
End-to-end- encryption, widely considered the gold standard, works by first scrambling data into unreadable code. When you send data or a message that is end-to-end encrypted, it travels across the internet in this protected form, making it useless to anyone who might intercept it—including service providers and hackers. Only when it reaches the recipient’s device does it transform back into readable form, using special keys that only the sender and recipient possess. The system also checks that the message wasn’t altered during delivery. This ensures your private communications stay private, with only the sender and the intended recipient able to read what’s shared.
Despite encryption’s vital role in our digital lives, it faces continuous threats from governments worldwide. Law enforcement agencies and intelligence services frequently pressure technology companies to create “exceptional access” capabilities—essentially, backdoors into encrypted communications. As Shane Tews of the American Enterprise Institute explains, “The reality is that any deliberate weakness in encryption introduces vulnerabilities that endanger all users… This approach contradicts basic principles of cybersecurity and creates attack vectors that sophisticated adversaries can exploit.”
Security professionals refer to this as the “master key” problem—a single point of failure that could compromise millions of communications simultaneously, regardless of whether the original intention was to limit access to authorized authorities.
The real-world dangers of backdoors were demonstrated in the “Salt Typhoon” attacks on American infrastructure. This cyber operation infiltrated major telecommunications providers like T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T to access unencrypted communications. The attack was partially enabled by backdoors created under the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA).
In her analysis of the incident, Tews highlights that “the law required the creation of standardized backdoors and interception mechanisms across networks, inadvertently introducing significant cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” The attack became one of the most extensive intelligence compromises in US history, exposing the inherent risks of deliberately weakened security systems.
More recent events further illustrate the ongoing threats to encryption. Following pressure from the UK government, Apple chose to disable its Advanced Data Protection feature for UK iCloud users rather than create backdoors to encryption. Without end-to-end encryption, the company and the British government can now access user data, compromising user privacy.
This represents a stark departure from previous protections where end-to-end encryption prevented even Apple from accessing user data. When service providers can access user data, that same access point becomes a potential target for malicious actors, creating risks that didn’t previously exist.
While authorities often justify these demands by citing public safety concerns, the reality is more complex – especially when it comes to minors. Strong encryption protects children’s personal information from cybercriminals and shields vulnerable young people from exploitation. Child protection agencies rely on encryption to handle sensitive cases securely, particularly when children need anonymity due to the risk of retaliation or further abuse. Without encryption, children’s data could be widely available to nefarious actors.
Maintaining public trust in digital communication remains essential as we navigate an era of increasing concerns about privacy erosion. This trust can only flourish in an environment where encryption standards remain robust and reliable. When encryption systems are compromised—even with good intentions—the foundations of digital security begin to crack, potentially exposing our most sensitive information to those who seek to misuse it.
The continued evolution of our digital society depends fundamentally on our collective commitment to preserving the integrity of encryption. Lawmakers at the state and federal level must recognize that weakening encryption for anyone ultimately weakens it for everyone.
